Tag Archives: fear

President Obama tonight said that we need to prevent “the cycle of bubble and bust”.

The opposite of bubble-and-bust is a planned economy. Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? Sure, we’ll just plan the economy and we won’t have to worry about business cycles or economic downturns anymore.

Fear Itself.

I know, that’s kind of weak. but I’m really not that afraid right at this moment. oh sure, I could find a lot of things to complain about, but the only things keeping me awake at night are an infant daughter and a work project I’m procrastinating on…

[S&P 500, 5 year chart] — that line on the far right side of the chart goes all the way down to 909, from a chart high of 1691. that’s got to be a crash.

I couldn’t bear the thought of NPR news on the drive in to work this morning, so I turned on the classical music station, figuring I could let me mind wander. the piece of work that greeted me was some kind of spiral into armegeddon… and at it’s conclusion the DJ (are they DJs on classical stations?) said that this work was Tchaikovsky’s Symphony_No._4, which was completed in the aftermath of a friends catastrophic marriage and claimed she would find in it “an echo of your most intimate thoughts and emotions.” Nice.

“If you can’t find joy within yourself, then look around, go to the people. See how they can give themselves up to pleasure! A peasant festival is depicted. But no sooner do you forget yourself in others’ joy than the unrelenting Fate again reminds its presence. Again the heavy theme from the first movement appears. But the others don’t care. They are not looking at you at all, they are still happy. Rejoice for the happiness of others, and so you can still bare to live.”

that’s what an air-conditioning technician says he has run across while fixing units in people’s attics, in an interview on NPR/Marketplace this evening.

made me shiver.

I heard once that no matter where you are, you’re never more than 10 feet away from a spider. (but I just thought of an exception: swimming in the middle of a pool. mental note…)

BONUS FEAR: listening to Marketplace is going to turn me into a socialist. it seems that they always put the worst spin on any good financial news, and seem to take delight when the markets are down. this week they had a series on ‘World Workers’, and yesterday their subject was a trans-gender sex worker in Baku, Azerbaijan. I kid you not. what does that have to do with financial markets and business news? it’s like trying turning to Fox News and hoping to get fair and balanced information. why do I even bother?

The Mark of the Beast is your I.P. address, combine that with a phone (pda’s, blackberries) and you have the mark in your hand !

this, and other gems, at Barack Obama the Anti-Christ? under the post Scripture Challenge. the challenge was to list bible passages that directly support the theory that Obama is the anti-Christ. 82 comments followed, with barely a handful of scripture and more insane theories than a weekend with Oliver Stone and a keg of Red Bull.

the biblical scholar quoted above also refers to Nostradamus as a prophet, “in this world to point us to the truth and show us the way.” riiiight.

originally, I was going to write about the bizarre run-in I had with an elderly in-law. somehow, everyone else had cleared out of the room for a few minutes, and in the quiet she started asking me what I thought about Obama. “oh, it’s an interesting race,” I said. “He’s a muslim, you know,” she replied. “No, no he’s not,” I objected. I explained to her that he proclaims to be a Christian, that he has attended a Christian church for years and years, and that he went to a “muslim” school in Indonesia simply because that was the best local option. “Well, he has a muslim background…” You can imagine how awkward the silence was for the next few minutes.

if you want to see what your IP address is, you can check it here. if it’s 192.6.6.6, well, serves you right for walking among the unwashed on the internet.

Mr. Right discovers their post and calls Gawker headquarters and leave a voice message. he also tapes it ‘so his lawyer could hear’ (bare in mind, this is a one-way conversation; he’s not recording anyone at Gawker) and equates re-posting his picture to stealing his social security number: “that’s fraud!”